Monthly Archives: December 2009

NVIDIA IS TRYING to make Ion2, its next generation ‘chipset’ seem like something it is not, but the specs say otherwise. It is just a warmed over G218 integrated graphics chip with a few ports added on.Read more▶

RAID IS ONE of those things that you either know what it is, or you don’t care what it is. However, it does offer benefits that make it worth looking into if you’re looking at either getting some extra performance out of your hard drives or want peace of mind that you’ll never lose your data.Read more▶

TOUCH SCREEN TECHNOLOGY has been one of the big things in the past year, especially the battle between resistive and capacitive technology with most people preferring the latter as it’s easier to use with your fingers. However, now there seem to be a new player entering the market as a New York University start up is getting ready to unleash its interpolating force-sensitive resistance touch sensor technology onto an unsuspecting world.Read more▶

NVIDIA’S RENAMING SCAM has another name to add to the list. The G215 is now called the GTS360M. Consumers aren’t warned that they are getting old tech with a new name, but Nvidia will proudly tell you that it is 120 more of something than the GT240 that was in desktop form, and the S and M are added bonuses.Read more▶

PANASONIC MIGHT NOT be best known for its battery technology, but the company has been doing rechargeables that go into notebooks for many years, not to mention a wide range of other electronics. It now seems like Panasonic is getting ready to give us all a nice power boost for our notebooks as the company has come up with a new improved Li-Ion cell that can store more power. This means either smaller batteries or longer battery life, both of which are potentially good things.Read more▶

SOME EARLY BENCHMARKS of Intel’s next generation integrated graphics processor have allegedly been posted by a “local paper” somewhere in Asia. It didn’t take long for them to appear online, but what is important to keep in mind is that these should be the worst case figures. Why? Well, simply because the CPU used is the Pentium G6950 which has its GPU running at a mere 533MHz and will most likely lack Intel’s Turbo feature for the IGP.Read more▶

DISPLAYLINK, THE COMPANY behind the fairly successful USB display controllers, is working on delivering chips with support for USB 3.0 and will be demoing it all at CES. It’s unlikely that we’ll see any retail products before the end of next year, but the chips will of course be available much sooner for DisplayLink’s partners to allow them to design new products and solutions.Read more▶

JUST AHEAD of the holiday’s, Apple’s stock shot up like a rocket gaining nearly $11 in value over two days’ trading. The reason? Well, either the fact that Apple has had excellent sales in the run up to Christmas, or the fact that the much rumoured tablet product from Apple got one step closer to being announced in January.Read more▶

WE’RE ALL FOR tools that help people pick suitable parts for their next system build, especially these days as it can be hard to figure out what bits goes with what. Futuremark has just launched a new tool in partnership with Gigabyte called the Gigabyte System Builder. Okay, so you only have the choice of Gigabyte motherboards and graphics cards, but that’s fair enough, as this is a business partnership and monies have been exchanged at one time or another to get this up and running.Read more▶

CES IS THAT first chance in the new year for companies to reveal what they’re working on for the coming year and it looks like Shuttle is getting ready to change its focus, just as so many other companies are. The pre CES press releases on Shuttle’s website talk about a new XPC, a new all-in-one, but also a secret new strategy called SPA and this is the big news that might just make or break Shuttle.Read more▶

IF YOU KNOW where to ask, you can get your hands on motherboards with Intel’s upcoming H57 chipset. Well, at least you can if you happen to live in Taipei. We headed down to the Guanghua computer market earlier today after having been told that some of the shops were selling H57 motherboards from Asus ahead of the official launch on the 7th of January next year.Read more▶

ISN’T IT GREAT when a technology company relaunches technology that no one really cared about the first time around? Broadcom has reannounced its Crystal HD video decoder solution for entry level notebooks and netbooks that lacks the graphics oomph to play HD video content, despite the uninspiring uptake last time around. So far there are only two netbooks on the market that ever got fitted with a Crystal HD module and only one of those is entering retail.Read more▶

NEC MIGHT STILL be the only company making USB 3.0 host controllers for PC motherboards, but there are seemingly oodles of manufacturers of USB 3.0 chips that go into devices that hook up to your PC. A full on price war has already started between these companies and considering that the starting price for these chips was somewhere between $5 to $6 and we’re already down to half of that, we should start seeing some very affordable USB 3.0 devices fairly soon.Read more▶

IT LOOKS LIKE we were right about Fermi being too big, too hot, and too late, Nvidia just castrated it to 448SPs. Even at that, it is a 225 Watt part, slipping into the future.
Updated: Nvidia declines to respondRead more▶

IT IS OUR really sad duty to inform you about rumors that DFI will be leaving the consumer motherboard business in January. The company is not going away, and will be refocusing on the industrial PC business.Read more▶

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Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also a council member with Gerson Lehman Group.

Thomas Ryan is based in Seattle, Washington. Thomas first began to appreciate the wonders of the semiconductor industry while doing research on his previous favorite hobby, PC gaming. Having co- purchased his first computer at the ripe old age of 11, with $150 and the help of Craigslist he's been buying and building computers ever since.

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